1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile terminal and a method for controlling the operation of the same, and more particularly to a mobile terminal and a method for controlling the operation of the same, wherein it is possible to selectively provide a smartphone mode or a general phone mode according to user selection.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile terminals are portable devices, which can provide users with various services such as a voice calling service, a video calling service, an information input/output service, and a data storage service.
As the types of services provided by mobile terminals diversify, an increasing number of mobile terminals have been equipped with various complicated functions such as capturing photos or moving pictures, playing music files or moving image files, providing game programs, receiving broadcast programs and providing wireless internet services and have thus evolved into multimedia players.
As a mobile terminal, a smartphone provides PC-like functions and other advanced functions that cannot be provided by general mobile phones. Thus, the smartphone can be considered a small computer having phone functionality and use thereof is on the rise recently.
A mobile terminal such as a smartphone generally uses both a communication processor that provides basic communication related functions and an application processor that provides other functions. The smartphone activates (or drives) both the communication processor and the application processor when the smartphone is powered on and booted and loads an OS such as Windows Mobile or Linux to provide PC-like or more advanced user interfaces such that various applications can be executed under the OS.
However, such a mobile terminal that uses both the communication processor and the application processor has problems in that it has high power consumption and a long boot time, compared to a general mobile phone which is often referred to as a ‘feature phone’.
Accordingly, there is a need to enable a mobile terminal such as a smartphone to provide only a general phone mode, in which only basic communication related functions are provided, according to user selection to minimize power consumption and to achieve faster boot times.